<p>My D is a HS senior and many of her friends graduated last year. She is begining to receive overnight invitations from her friend that are in colleges nearby (within an hour or two). I am not keen on letting her go at this point but she is pushing back hard with all the arguments - I am going to be 18 in a couple of months, I am going next year, yadi yadi, ya. How have you dealt with this issue?</p>
<p>My kids are 8 years apart and when oldest went off to school ( about 4-5 hrs away), I took her 11 yr old sister down to stay with her, I later sent her on the train with a friend & later by herself.
D2 really enjoyed it, so much so that when D1 took a year off making her own graduation off by a year, we all went down to see graduation of the original freshman class.
I was comfortable with her staying in the dorm ( D1 had a single room, until senior yr when she lived in a townhouse with a roommate).</p>
<p>Do you have specific concerns?</p>
<p>My D did few college visits by visiting and staying with friends. It gave her a feel for what living on campus was like, what types of schools, campuses she liked, etc. Will there be partying? Depends on your kid. We just had one rule - no driving. She flew to a couple colleges, so that wasn’t a problem, and we drove her to another school and dropped her off for the weekend.</p>
<p>My kids hardly did any visits where they didn’t stay with friends. Worked fine. I wasn’t under the illusion that my children lived in a pristine, substance-free, sex-free bubble when they were at home, so I wasn’t too concerned about what they might encounter on college visits. They were who they were; their friends were who their friends were. I basically trusted everyone involved not to go overboard, and they didn’t.</p>
<p>My wife still remembers fondly visiting one of her sisters at Vassar when my wife was in 8th or 9th grade. Lots of wildness and craziness – this particular sister-in-law did not calm down until well into her 40s. My wife: never a wild and crazy person. Spending a few weekends with her wild and crazy sister didn’t change that.</p>
<p>Excellent idea. Better than visiting your older sister- I still remember the trauma of my sister and her friends getting me on the floor and tickling me past the point of good fun. Presume these are college freshmen living in dorms. Sent my 16 year old son off to college as a full time freshman, your D is older than that. The dorm setting is better than being at someone’s home when the parents are gone for the weekend.</p>
<p>My oldest is cautious and pretty straightlaced- she is now getting her MAT. She was living in the subfree dorms and her idea of a friend, was a girl so radical that she brought nylons & heels to Reed ;). My younger daughter had great pleasure in helping this girl organize her room at the beginning of sophomore year.</p>
<p>Now if the D’s were * reversed* I might have had to think more about if I wanted to send my cautious one to stay with my daredevil.</p>
<p>But the kids at college aren’t going to change radically from when they were in high school- I think many kids first find out about college from staying with a friend- especially as many of the larger schools don’t do overnights.</p>
<p>At 16 I visited friends in college a lot-- I don’t remember being exposed to anything more than I was at home, and it gave me a feel for college life and what I wanted. I will definitely allow–encourage-- my daughter to do the same. She’s more cautious than I was at that age.</p>
<p>My kids (who are now hs seniors) did an overnight with Grinnell this past Feb as juniors (through their official program, not through friends – they are, however, planning a roadtrip in a few weeks to visit friends and stay overnight). Apparently S saw or smelled some pot during his time there. He seemed more upset about it than H and I were. We were of the “oh well, yeah, college dorm, bound to happen, whatever, not the end of the world, move on.” He’s a little Alex P. Keaton at times.</p>
<p>OP,
what exactly are your worries? Are you familiar with the friends she wants to visit? Did you like them/approve of them when they were in high school.</p>
<p>They won’t have changed too much in such a short amount of time. They may have “experimented” some with all of the new freedom of the college campus, but my guess is things won’t get too wild with your daughter because they know word might reach their own parents. </p>
<p>Your daughter certainly will be exposed to things outside her high school experience, perhaps, but it might also provide the basis for some mature family discussions leading up to her launch next fall.</p>
<p>This is a great way to visit colleges, and get a real feel for dorm life. I would encourage it at any chance.</p>
<p>Another vote for encouraging h.s. seniors to visit friends at college, especially if it is one of the colleges that the senior is applying to. Even if it isn’t, it gives them a nice feel for college life.</p>
<p>S1 didn’t want to do “official” overnights – he preferred to connect with friends at the schools where he was visiting. The dorm life was important to him. Was offered alcohol and pot, learned that he could turn it down and he wouldn’t be the only one doing so and that he could still have a good time.</p>
<p>It’s a good learning experience, even if your kid has no plans to apply. OTOH, she may fall in love with a school that’s fairly close to home and affordable!</p>
<p>I can see a potential for problems in some instances.</p>
<p>It’s hard for a guest at a college to avoid uncomfortable situations because the guest may have nowhere else to go.</p>
<p>If your daughter can drive to visit these friends, I think it’s probably OK (unless she is likely to drink). With a car, she would have a way of extricating herself from an uncomfortable situation. But driving to visit her friends may not be possible, even if your daughter has her own car, if there is nowhere to park on campus overnight. </p>
<p>If the friends are not entirely trustworthy and your daughter has to be dropped off and picked up – or if she takes mass transit (which may not be available in the middle of the night or may not be safe even if it is available) – I can see how difficult situations might occur, and how your daughter might have trouble extricating herself from those situations.</p>
<p>Perhaps, before the visit, it might help to make contingency plans for such situations. For example, what if there is a party involving alcohol in the place where she is staying, and one or more of the young men at the party, while under the influence of alcohol, starts heavily pressuring her to have sex that she does not want to have? What strategy could she use to extricate herself from the situation?</p>
<p>The answer to this question is not as simple as it will be when she is an actual college student who could leave the party and go back to her own room (or go to another location on campus – such as a lounge or study room in her dorm – if the party was taking place in her own room but she could not ask the troublesome guest to leave because he had been invited by her roommate). </p>
<p>[Edited to add: My concerns may be a little paranoid. But I’m the sort of person who ALWAYS likes to have a way of extricating myself from situations. I don’t even like it if somebody parks their car behind mine in the driveway.]</p>
<p>Oh my, the “I’m almost 18” to be followed by “I’m 18!” arguments - welcome to our world. :)</p>
<p>I’ll start by saying that this is something we didn’t have to encounter, but probably would not have allowed except under controlled circumstances last year with our senior. Sorry, that’s just how we do it. </p>
<p>But, you mention you are not “keen” on the idea - can you be more specific? What are you worried about? The drive? Partying? Safety? Maybe knowing might help our “advice”. </p>
<p>Side note: one of my best friends S is at a school 3 1/2 hours away from home. Friends came down to visit a couple of weeks ago - underage of course, but one of them had a sibling at the school who was of age - yep, they had the nerve to bring alcohol in friends S’s room and they got caught. Not good. Even though friend’s S was not drinking (so he says) others were and he is still in trouble. My point is, know your daughter, know her friends the best you can and give her the tools to play safely.</p>
<p>I’m with Marian, I always have to have an exit strategy! :)</p>
<p>My oldest, now a college freshman, never asked to go on college overnights or to visit friends but I could see her younger sister asking. It will all depend on where and who she is visiting and all other circumstances but I woudln’t say no if the cards lined up.</p>
<p>However I will always remember the party I attended when I visited a friend at UMiami when I was a senior (and I was 15 when I was a senior) - if I thought that was a possibility there would be a firm no - so far however my kids are far tamer and wiser than their dear Mom was! So far!</p>
<p>Shillyshally - I agree! My kids are much tamer than I was at their age…and that is the problem 
I think my concerns are mainly around safety. To be honest, I fully expect that she will will party once she is there, I would be naive to think otherwise. I just remember the older guys (Juniors and Seniors) ■■■■■■■■ the drunk freshman girls early in the year before they got their act together…so, I love the idea of an exit strategy…</p>
<p>@pizzagirl: at least your AP Keaton told you about that smell that, for some reason, way back when we were told was “sickly sweet,” lol. I have no idea how D would react to witnessing smoking, but I am darned sure she wouldn’t tell us about it! Good for him. On the other hand, my true feelings would be like yours…it’s college, no biggie, nobody’s going to force you to partake, blah blah. On the OTHER other hand, the visit probably did him good in that a school where such partying is so evident (assuming it’s not every college out there) might be a bad match for him.</p>
<p>My son will probably overnights at the schools he’s been accepted to before a final decision is made. His very close friends are all the same year…it just happened that way, so there isn’t a great pull to go visit a friend who has just left and is on a college campus. We debated having the overnights at potential schools in the fall but decided against it. The groups that host at the schools he’s seriously considering have hosts that are current freshman. He’ll get a better feeling for the school by visiting when his hosts have a better feeling for the school…second semester. We also don’t want to send him to his dream school and have him disappointed if via admissions that’s not one he’ll be choosing from.
We discussed it with him… he’s fine with it.</p>
<p>The more I think about it, the more inclined I am to let her visit second semester…</p>
<p>This brings back fond memories. Both my younger sister (by about 3 years) and my younger brother (by exactly 10 years) visited me at my college (Harvey Mudd) and stayed over for a few days on separate occasions. My sister’s visit was relatively uneventful except for adjusting to the usual spontaneous shenanigans (water fights etc; you had to learn to watch your back; took her less than a day to acclimate), but my brother who was about eight at the time of his visit, and who was an extremely personable and self-possessed child, really had fun. </p>
<p>He knew enough of my friends, and the campus was small and safe enough that I let him wander on his own while I was busy with work. He visited people, he joined in on a couple of ongoing D&D games, and he hung out by the swimming pool where he was cooed over by all of the Scripps girls who were there and who kept saying “if only you were ten years older!” (and then who just laughed at me when I pointed out that <em>I</em> was the bona fide ten-year-older version of him, and, you know, what the hey??).</p>
<p>At the time my friends and I were also holding fairly frequent cookouts at the dorms to which we’d invite professors and other school officials, and when my brother visited we had a dinner where we’d invited the college president and his wife. During the dinner a subset of students spontaneously organized a trip off campus to go see a movie (not appropriate for my brother). I initially begged off going because I wasn’t comfortable leaving my brother alone for a whole evening when I was completely off-campus, but then the president and his wife offered to have him over at their house while we were out. I accepted, and my brother had a great time with them while I was out that evening; he went grocery shopping with the wife (always a thrill to an eight year old), and afterward the president, among other things, showed off his model train collection to him (which apparently was quite extensive and about which he was very proud).</p>
<p>I still remember the my mom’s horror when she picked him up and was told what had happened. It went like this:</p>
<p>my brother: guess who babysat me Saturday night?’
my friends: (laughter)
my mother: why are you all laughing?..Oh, no, please don’t tell me you had a professor babysit him?
me: of course I didn’t have a professor babysit him.
my mother: oh, thank god…
my brother (in very quiet voice): it was the president.
my mother: the president? Of the college? Oh, you’re very funny. Wait…you’re not joking, are you…Oh my god, YOU’RE NOT JOKING…!!</p>
<p>And after that whenever I’d run into the president on campus he’d ask me how my little brother was doing, and only after I’d filled him in on my brother’s latest doings would he ask how I was. Thinking back on it, between the president and (especially) the girls from Scripps, it’s a wonder I didn’t end up burying my brother out behind the library and telling my mom “yeah, he just wandered off and I haven’t seen him since…nope, no idea where he is…”</p>